Globalize Me

So, just days after I heard from person at an anonymous major canadian telco that they’re deliberately dropping modem-over-cellphone calls because that might give consumers a way around their ridiculous data-rate fees, Bell (to presumably preempt Rogers’ impending iPhone news) releases a $7 unlimited data plan that is:

Only available non-transferably on only the HTC Touch, and

that device has been deliberately crippled, so you can’t plug a keyboard into it or use it as a bridge for any other devices, so

you can use the internet, provided you scribble in URLs with their tiny-screen handwriting recognition or little tic-tac-sized on-screen keyboard.

It’s not even worth seven dollars a month, because it’s nothing more than a novelty.

Not to mention Bell keeps paying Norm Mcdonald to provide the voice of a computer-animated, anthropomorphic beaver, which is just completely unforgivable. Bell: get the fuck out.

And, of course, Rogers is holding off on the iPhone as long as possible, because if consumers got a sensible data plan then blackberry users might start insisting on one too, and golly, we can’t have that. Extortion rackets aren’t going to prop themselves up, let me tell you.

Then yesterday, I got this great news, which basically marks beginning of the end of the crappy cellphone situation in this country.

I got to watch some shill from Telus go on about how this was “undemocratic” and “bad for the taxpayer” and thirty seconds worth of other sky-is-falling harping, and it was the best thing I’ve seen on TV in months. In fairness, she wasn’t really wrong; if you’re a telco the sky is falling, but it’s only going to land on you.

3 Comments

1. That is actually an excellent deal for wireless internet access. I pay $15 a month at Sprint for the same terms (different phone, but the HTC Touch is one of the options, and most of the other options are even worse suited for internetting; they disallow contractually the tethered stuff at all times); Verizon charges $45 for a similar data access plan.

2. The internet is useful even without a keyboard, I assure you. Incoming email, for one; for another, it’s easy enough to browse the web from a list of links with a stylus. It sucks about not being able to WRITE anything, but hey.

The point is not whether or not it’s a good deal – it clearly is, but the datum you’re missing is that this is the _only_ truly unlimited data plan on the Canadian market, and it’s locked to one crippled-on-purpose device.